Merline Lovelace (15 page)

The man doubled over, gasping, only to be yanked upright again by his neck cloth.

“Tell me!”

James couldn’t tell him anything! He didn’t dare open his mouth and let out so much as a whimper. He hadn’t known what his father intended, could
hardly keep from pissing his pants when he’d learned what had been engineered.

But who would believe him? Who would agree he was only a pawn in a dangerous game? He was in this now every bit as deep as his father and knew only one way out. He had to play the hand he was dealt.

“Tell me, damn you!”

James took a second blow, was yanked upright again with another cruel twist of his stock. Terrified, he clawed at the brutal hold.

“I…know…nothing.”

Daniel looked into his eyes, saw stark fear in their depths. At that moment, he knew the lieutenant would take whatever secrets he held to the grave with him. His fist bunched, tightening the noose around Wilkinson’s neck. Every muscle strained with the urge to beat the man to a quivering, whimpering pulp.

The lieutenant flailed at his hand, his blows weaker by the second. His eyes rolled back in his head. He went limp.

With a disgusted growl, Daniel released him. The man sank like a stone and lay on his back, twitching and gasping. Daniel stood over him for a moment, his chest heaving, then swung around to the orderly.

The corporal stood his ground, but his face flew ruddy flags of color at the sergeant’s approach.

“What do you know of your lieutenant’s affairs?”

“Nothing! All I do is lay out his uniforms and clean his boots.”

“Don’t shovel that horseshit on me, man.”

“I swear, he never discusses his personal affairs. His father won’t allow it.”

A muscle ticked in the side of Daniel’s jaw. He had to think, had to bring order to his chaotic thoughts. “When you answered the door, you said the lieutenant was preparing to go out. Where?”

“To meet some of his fellow officers, he said.”

“At what place?”

The batman hesitated, threw a glance at his still-gasping superior. Loyalty often forged the bond between servant and master into a thick chain. Just as often, it ran as thin as water, particularly in the ranks, where being selected for valet duty often subjected the chosen one to jeers and insults from his peers. In army parlance, batmen were known as dog-robbers, pitiful half-soldiers who stole scraps from the table that would otherwise be thrown to household pets.

Daniel would never know whether it was a secret satisfaction at seeing his superior brought low or the desire to save his own skin that loosened Simons’s mouth.

“I think,” he whispered, “the lieutenant may have made mention of a tavern down by the river. I don’t remember the name.”

Daniel found Louise in the dark hours after midnight.

Pistol in hand, he crashed through the door of an upstairs room in the riverfront hovel that billed itself as the Hounds of Orleans. The first thing he noticed
was the sickly sweet scent of opium that hung in the small room like a cloud.

The second was the figure on the bed. She lay on her back, sprawled across the mattress. Long, tangled black hair spilled over her shoulders. Her gown lay on the floor beside the bed and her chemise was unbuttoned in the front. The light from the near-gutted candle gleamed on the smooth, swelling mounds of her breasts.

“Son of a whore!”

He fought the rage pulsing through him in hot, red waves. Shoving his pistol into his belt, he ducked his head to keep from hitting the low-hanging eaves and went to her.

“Louise…”

Her eyelids fluttered up. Her glazed eyes showed only a small rim of blue surrounding the huge, dark pupils.

“Daniel.”

A dreamlike smile curved her lips. She lifted her arms in slow, languorous invitation.

“I knew you would come to me.”

W
ith murder in his heart, Daniel stood over the woman sprawled on the bed. He’d kill Wilkinson! Gut the whoreson with his own sword. If the lieutenant had brought Louise here and left her in this state, he wouldn’t live to see another dawn.

Setting his pistol on the crude wooden shelf above the bed, Daniel sank onto the dingy sheets. When he gathered her into his arms, her head lolled back and her vague smile cut into his heart.

“I call to you.” Her words were so thick he could hardly understand her. “Always, I call to you.”

The fat tavern keeper downstairs claimed she’d come in with two men. Two Spaniards, who’d paid him well for a room and a bed where they could play their games with the whore they’d brought in from the streets. Yes, the whore had a tumble of black hair. No, the barkeep hadn’t seen her eyes. She’d been too drunk to keep them open.

Not drunk, Daniel saw now. She hadn’t been drunk.

He was no stranger to the effects of opium. It could be bought at any apothecary shop. Men and women alike drank laudanum to cure any number of ailments, from nervous tremors to birthing pains. When mixed with tobacco leaves, opium extract provided pipe smokers with temporary release from all cares.

Daniel had seen troopers resort to the restorative often enough among the ranks, had seen as well the havoc it wreaked on military discipline. That was why smoking opium while in uniform had but recently been forbidden. And why he knew the next few hours would take their toll.

Gathering Louise against his chest, he rocked her back and forth. “I’ve got you, sweeting. I’ve got you.”

Instead of soothing her, the soft murmur roused her from her stupor. She squirmed around and frowned up at him.

“You will not…call me this.” Dragging her tongue along her dry, cracked lower lip, she struggled for the words. “It is…it is how you call Elizabeth.”

Dear God! She was near enough to stupor as made no difference, yet she recognized him, recognized as well the woman who stood between them.

“Call me as I am,” she mumbled. “Wah-shi-tu.”

He remembered the first time she’d told him her Osage name, saw again the clean white snow, the sky so blue above stands of blue spruce and dark
pine. Tucking her head under his chin, he rocked her gently.

“Wah-shi-tu,” he echoed. “What does it mean?”

She slumped into his chest, her whispered reply almost lost against his uniform coat. “The accursed one.”

Christ’s foot! No wonder she’d chosen to use the name Henri Chartier and the priest had given her. “Maybe that’s what it means in Osage,” he told her softly, fiercely. “In my reckoning, it means the brave and beautiful one.”

She didn’t answer. Her breath coming slow and shallow, she sagged bonelessly against his chest.

Daniel was clutching her tight when he heard the
thud
of a heavy tread on the stairs outside the door. Untangling his arms, he laid her on the mattress and dragged the sheet over her.

He was on his feet, his pistol in hand, a second later. He ached for Wilkinson to show his face. Or one of the Spanish bastards who’d hired this room. All any of them had to do was show his face…

To his knifing disappointment, it was the tavern keeper who puffed to the top of the stairs. Red-faced and wrapped in a stained leather apron the size of a two-man tent, he hooked a thumb at the woman on the bed.

“She’s the one you seek?”

“She is.”

His massive shoulders lifted in a shrug. “It’s no matter to me if you want to take another man’s leav
ings, but you’ll have to pay for the use of the bed if you’ve a mind to take a tumble with her yourself.”

Disgusted, Daniel lowered the pistol. “Tell me what you know of the Spaniards who brought her here.”

“What is there to tell? They paid me with copper
maravedies,
they spoke the Viceroy’s tongue and they promised there’d be no screams except of pleasure. Now I know why.” He sniffed the air, his nose wrinkling at the sweet stench. “Opium eater, is she?”

“What about the other? The one you told me came after the Spaniards?”

“Never saw his face. Kept a fancy silk handkerchief to his nose, as though the stink of the riverfront was too much for him.”

“Did he wear a uniform?”

“If he did, his cloak covered it. Wrapped in the thing from neck to knees, he was. The kitchen slut thinks she saw a flash of gold lace once, but she’s taken too many blows to the head and says whatever she has a fancy to.”

Daniel smothered an oath. He’d find no reliable witnesses here to take to the captain of the guards. Either the tavern keeper told the truth, or he’d been bribed well to keep his mouth shut. Daniel dismissed him with a curt order.

“Tell the kitchen wench to bring a bucket of water.”

When the man had waddled out, Daniel returned
to the bed. His mouth grim, he unbuckled his cartridge belt, dragged off his uniform jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

“Take another drink.”

Keeping a firm grip on Louise’s shoulders, he held the dipper to her lips.

“No more. Please!” She squirmed in his hold. The sheet he’d wrapped her in twisted around her thighs. “My belly swells now like a buffalo’s bladder.”

“Better your belly swells than the opium stays in your blood. Drink the rest.”

“I cannot!” she snapped, shoving his hand away.

The fire was back in both her eyes and her voice. Relieved, Daniel tossed the dipper into the wooden bucket the kitchen maid had brought up.

Holding the sheet with one hand, Louise pushed back her tangled hair with the other. Her gaze traveled around the small, hot room under the eaves as if seeing it for the first time. Her glance lingered on the stained floorboards, the soot-streaked timbers in the sloped ceiling, the chair Daniel had propped against the door to hold it shut.

“How long have I been here?”

“Three days, best I can tell.”

Her jaw set. She sat silent for a long moment. He could only imagine what thoughts sifted through her mind.

“It shames me,” she said finally. “Greatly.”

“No!” Taking her chin in his hand, he turned her face to his. “You’re not to blame for whatever happened here.”

“But I am to blame for what happened at your quarters.”

In mumbled fits and starts, she told him of the struggle in his apartments, of seeing Elizabeth held in a brutal grip, then thrown aside, of her own fierce battle to escape.

“How in God’s name can you think any of that was your fault?”

“Me, I let them take me too easily. I should have used my knife. I should have kept them from hurting Elizabeth.”

“Listen to me, Louise. You did all you could and more. You bloodied at least one of the scoundrels who attacked you and Elizabeth.”

“Better I cut out his entrails!”

Daniel would take care of that. “Tell me again what you recall of them.”

“One has a mustache and a ring in his right ear. I tell you that already. They spoke in the Spanish tongue.”

“You say they were waiting for you there in my quarters?”

“Yes. They knew my habits, knew also of my Osage blood. One—the one I cut—says I fight like a savage.”

“Did they make mention of any name?”

“Not then, but later I hear yours.”

“My name? How was it spoken?”

“I cannot remember. Perhaps—”

“Perhaps what?”

She wet her lips, staring up at him with huge, bruised eyes.

“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I hear it only in my head. Perhaps I want so desperately for it to be you who comes to me here, I say your name to myself.”

With an ache that went bone deep, Daniel gathered her into his arms.

Louise buried her face in his shoulder. She had not thought she could feel such shame. Not because of what those pigs had done to her. She would settle with them in her own time and her own way. But because Daniel had found her like this, so weak, so helpless, so eager to spread her legs for him.

He’d cleaned her. Clothed her in her soiled chemise. Used the same gentleness with her he used with Elizabeth.

That had humiliated her even more.

“You say you went to James? You think he’s the one who had me brought here?”

“If he didn’t, he knows who did. He’ll pay for his part in this, Louise. I swear to you, he’ll pay.”

That was what she feared. Daniel would avenge her and, in the white man’s way, he would hang for it. Already he faced retribution for the beating he said he’d given James. Sick at heart, she knew of only one way to save him.

“Listen to me, Daniel. You must think with your head, not your heart. If you take vengeance on James without proof, they will hang you. And if that happens, what will become of Elizabeth?”

His head snapped back. “For the sake of God! Do
you think I need to be reminded of my responsibilities to my wife?”

“Yes! Me, I take care of myself. Always I have done so. But Elizabeth—”

Eyes blazing, he gripped her arms. “What kind of a man do you take me for? Do you really believe I’d turn a blind eye to what was done to you? Is that how I’m to honor my vow to Chartier?”

“Henri is dead. I do not want you dead also!”

He would have wrenched away in disgust, but Louise clung to him, desperate to make him understand.

“I know you are brave, Daniel. I know a warrior’s heart beats in your breast. I could not ache for you as I do if this were not so.”

“You picked a fine way to show it.”

“I don’t ask you to ignore what was done to me, only to bide your time. Find this proof you say is needed, have a care to Elizabeth until it is done.”

“And in the meantime, we’re to let the dogs who snatched you have another chance at you?”

It was an idea she hadn’t considered. She could offer herself as bait, lure James out of the shadows—if he was the one who’d had her taken, the one who’d crawled between her legs. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t separate the blurred images swirling around in her mind.

One image, only one, was clear and sharp. The one before her now. She’d carry the memory of his wide shoulders, strong jaw and gray eyes with her wherever she went.

“No,” she replied quietly. “I do not want to let them have another chance at me. I go away from New Orleans. Today.”

“That’s probably for the best. You’ll be safer away from here. I’ll see you settled and—”

“You do not understand.” Gripping the sheet, Louise rose onto her knees. “I go far away. To France.”

“France?”

“I spoke with Bernard Thibodeaux before…before this happens. I tell him to book me passage on the next ship that leaves.”

A retort rose in Daniel’s throat. He couldn’t protect her with an ocean between them. The bitter realization that he’d done a piss poor job of protecting her here in New Orleans sent the protest back down his throat.

Chances were he’d be brought up on charges for assaulting the lieutenant. If Wilkinson had a hand in Louise’s kidnapping, he’d be counting on the fact that no one, her included, could identify him or in any way tie him to the men who’d taken her. They’d dosed her all too well. Even the tavern keeper would swear she was an opium eater, awash in a sea of her own imaginings.

Daniel’s word would be discredited, as well. He’d attacked a superior, assaulted him in his own quarters. His only defense was a suspicion that Wilkinson had some knowledge of Louise’s abduction. A suspicion he still couldn’t prove, despite doing his damnedest to choke the truth out of the man.

The only hope of connecting the lieutenant to the kidnapping was to find those Spaniards. Until he did, Louise was safer away from here.

“What will you do in France?” he asked, struggling to accept the idea that she’d be gone from him.

“Speak with the lawyers who settle my claim. Seek out my husband’s people. Leave you to Elizabeth.”

He opened his mouth to argue.

“I must go,” she said softly, gripping the sheet with a white-knuckled fist. “I can’t bear to see you torn between the two of us, any more than I could bear to see you hang.”

“Louise—”

“I ask only one thing of you before I leave you.” Her sad, beautiful eyes smiled into his. “Kiss me, Daniel. Just once more.”

He knew before he lowered his head that it wouldn’t end with a single kiss. Louise had refused to let whatever happened here break her, had fought her way through the drugging mists with the same ferocity she’d battled every other enemy. She was awake now, fully aware of what she asked for, and as hungry for him as he was for her.

He moved his mouth over hers. Slowly at first. Gently. As if to store up her touch and her taste in his memory. After the first kiss, he craved more than a taste. His hand cupped her shoulders, drew her close. Her arms lifted to lock around his neck.

The sheet dropped. Like stones toppling from a wall, every restraint fell with it. The gnawing need
he’d denied for so long burst its chains. Daniel shut his mind to any thought of his wife. All he could think of, all he wanted to think of, was this woman.

Her skin was like warm honey, smooth where he touched it, salty sweet where he tasted it. Savoring the flavors, he trailed kisses along her cheek, over her chin, down the line of her throat.

Her head went back. Eyes closed, Louise reveled in the feel of his hands and his mouth on her body. She’d ached for his touch for so long. Had imagined he would kindle little sparks under her skin, just as he now did.

The fear and confusion of the past days and nights seeped out of her bones. The blurred images faded completely. She’d wanted his kiss to drive them from her mind. Now, she wanted him.

Bringing her head forward, she fumbled at the ties to his linen shirt. The skin beneath was warm to her touch. She slid her palms under the linen and peeled it back, gliding her fingers over hot flesh and hard muscle.

A smile feathered her lips. “Your skin is brown from the sun,” she murmured, dropping kisses on his shoulder. “More brown than mine. Perhaps you should come with me and we will go to this place where no one will notice our dark skin.”

“I would give my soul to come with you.”

She tipped her head back, saw he spoke from the heart. “But you will not,” she said softly.